Mary M. Lane

Reporter, The Wall Street Journal.

Mary M. Lane is based in The Wall Street Journal's Berlin bureau. She is the paper's European art correspondent, covering both the cultural and economic facets of the international art world including show openings, artist profiles, art fairs, auctions and market trends.

Her work regularly appears in Arena, Review and Marketplace. Ms. Lane, who speaks fluent German and English and proficient Chinese, also covers German business and politics—most colorfully the anti-Barbie protests organized by the youth wing of the former Communist Party in Berlin.

She was a Fulbright Journalism Fellow with the Journal before being hired and was previously a DAAD Junior Fellow with the Berliner Zeitung.

A native of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Ms. Lane graduated from Middlebury College and holds degrees in German Studies and Sinology. Follow her on Twitter at @MaryLaneWSJ.

A lawsuit filed in a U.S. district court over a Berlin museum’s medieval treasure is the latest sign of conflict despite the German government’s pledge last year to strengthen its artwork restitution procedures.

A show at London’s National Portrait Gallery, soon to come to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, shows John Singer Sargent’s paintings of other artists and friends like Monet and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Bogotá, Budapest, Johannesburg and Seoul are increasingly making their presence known on the global arts scene, with galleries not only promoting the local art scene but also beginning to deal in works by major Western artists.

Galleries from unfamiliar art-market cities are starting to occupy pricer spaces near established heavyweights at FIAC and Frieze. Here’s a look at works from four cities increasingly making their presence known in the global arena.